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E-voting Trials and Tribulations
Alex Susor writes "This article is about the new digital touch screen voting system in Georgia, the first state in the nation to adopt this method of voting statewide. Demonstration machines were set up at the recent primaries to teach voters about the new system (to be in place for the November general election) and had some big problems." Compare and contrast to systems in Florida and Germany.
It had a touch-screen with a display that was probably about 18" high and 9" wide. There was a card reader to the right where you inserted your voting card. I'm not sure how the distribution of the cards will work. I don't know if they will issue every voter a card or if you get the card when you go to vote. It looked like it had a smart chip on it instead of a magstripe.
The user interface was pretty easy. It would present one or more categories and all the candidates for each category. You just touched the one you wanted. Once you selected a candidate, it greyed out the others. It took me a few seconds to figure out that if I changed my mind, I had to touch previous selection to undo it. There were "Next" and "Previous" buttons to navigate through the various pages.
At the end, it showed a summary of my votes so I could give a final yes/no to my choices. It printed out some kind of receipt, I think, but I didn't really look at it.
If I had to guess on the platform, I have to say that I did see an hourglass icon that looked just like the one in Windows. Maybe they're running WinCE or something. It looked a lot like one of those "pen computing" devices that never really went anywhere.
I would probably feel a little more secure about the system if it printed out a ballot that I then had to put in a ballot box, so it wouldn't be any worse than what we have now (from a fraud standpoint). It is certainly easier to use than the punch ballots we have now.